


The Next Best Thing

by Afriendlyenigma



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Katara (Avatar)-centric, Minor Bato/Hakoda (Avatar)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29250753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afriendlyenigma/pseuds/Afriendlyenigma
Summary: Sometimes, when things are getting on top of her, Katara just wants her mother.But although her mother is gone, she does have the next best thing...Gran Gran.
Relationships: Kanna & Katara (Avatar)
Kudos: 5





	The Next Best Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Here's just a little piece exploring Katara and Kanna's relationship. This modern au is set in the Avatar world, but there is no bending and no war, and Katara is aged up to be in her early 20's.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The harsh white background of the Google homepage was making her head hurt. The little black text cursor blinked on and off the screen, as though telling her with electronic indifference to make her mind up. Katara sniffed, wiping her eyes with the already soaking cuff of her mother’s cardigan. It was made of sky bison hair dyed a deep purple, and her aunts had told Katara that her mother had bought it for a ridiculous amount of money in a shop in Omashu when she was a student, long before she’d met Dad. Katara had inherited all of her mother’s jumpers and parkas, although it had been years before they actually fit her properly. Gran Gran had put some of them in vacuum sealed bags for her, and stored them in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe in Dad’s old bedroom, so that she would have some things with her mother’s scent even after she’d grown up. After fourteen years, Katara very much doubted it, but if she closed her eyes and really focussed, maybe for just a second or so something very deep in the most primitive part of her brain fired some neurons (or something like that; she knew just enough about neuroscience to be conscious of how much she didn’t), and it really was almost like her mother was there.

Almost.

She sighed, staring at the blank search bar. She’d been at Gran Gran’s for a few days, to get peace and quiet to finish some assignments. Studying medicine online was… interesting, to say the least. She missed the social interaction of lectures and tutorials, of course, but on the whole she had managed okay with that side of things. Even the practical element had been resolved by her being able to do her placements in hospitals in the Water Tribe territory. It didn’t help that her boyfriend was stuck in the Northern Air Temple while the Earth Kingdom tried and failed to get the pandemic under control and she hadn’t been able to see him for over six months, but she hadn’t let that distract her from her studies. She was doing great. She was fine.

Wasn’t she?

At the sound of soft knock on the door, Katara closed her laptop lid.

“Come in,” she croaked, not even bothering to keep the waver out of her voice.

Watching the reflection in the extremely smeary mirror that her dad had covered the edges of with manga stickers decades before, she saw Gran Gran stick her head around the door.

“Is it too cold in the study? I can change the timer on the heating if you want to…”

She paused, finally noticing the empty plastic clothes bag Katara had ripped her way into to get to her mother’s cardigan. Although she was now in her 90’s, Gran Gran clearly had robust genes, compared to Katara’s other grandmother. Her hair had long turned white, but it was still long, soft and relatively thick. It was loose over either shoulder, meaning she hadn’t yet braided it before going to bed.

Katara wrapped her mother’s cardigan tighter around her, slowly turning herself in Dad’s ancient desk chair. Gran Gran simply shut the door behind her and went to sit on the bed. Without even thinking about it, Katara hauled herself to her feet and went to join her. The mattress sank beneath her, having not been replaced since Dad left home when he got married. No, that couldn’t be right. They’d spent a fair amount of time at Gran Gran’s after Mum died, with Katara and Sokka sharing the double bed in the spare bedroom, and Dad sleeping in his old room. He’d come down to breakfast one day and announced one of the springs had given up the ghost.

_“That’s what you get for using it as a dump for fourteen years_ ,” Gran Gran had said dryly, before going to get her purse. That morning had been the first time they’d laughed about anything for weeks.

Even still, it could probably do with being replaced again, soon.

“I’m fine, really,” Katara said, even though her throat was so raw it hurt to speak. A tissue miraculously appeared in her hand, just as she felt Gran Gran’s arm around her shoulder.

They sat together for a minute or so, listening to the radiator pipes rattle to themselves. Unlike Google, she never had to explain herself to Gran Gran, not in words. There were no words she knew of that could possibly describe the way her eyes would start streaming whenever her thoughts would wander for too long, how whenever she couldn’t remember the name of some obscure tendon she felt like a stupid little girl who had no business playing at being a productive member of society, how this past year had ground and ground her further and further into herself, how that she worried if she would ever see Aang again, if she would die alone not even able to remember what it felt like to be loved.

“You just want your mum, don’t you?”

Katara wiped her nose with the tissue, and nodded. There hadn’t been a single moment since that night when she was eight years old that she hadn’t wanted her mother. It was like there was an ever-present bottomless cavern inside her, where nothing else would ever quite fit, would never be able to make her feel whole again. It was an ache she’d learned to live with, most of the time, and the hole was pretty much full with all the love in her life. She had her brother, her friends, Aang, Dad, her step-dad (people were often confused about that, until she explained that Bato was actually married to her Dad; she was oddly proud that her father was the only person in the Water Tribe to have had both a wife and a husband). Her memory of her mother drove everything she did in life. She decided to become a doctor to help make sure no other children lost theirs due to medical negligence (using some of her share of the money from the lawsuit to pay for it, naturally). She always seemed to convince herself that if she just spent a minute longer with this patient, or if she just went to this women’s’ rights protest, or if she challenged a sexist dinosaur on the Elder Council, then it would…

But there was nothing she could do that would make her mother any less dead.

Gran-gran had told her about how, shortly after her Dad was born, she’d taken him to the last surviving shaman in the Water Tribe, who had told her that her son would need her, and so she would live to a great age. But although Gran Gran had always wished she could have had more children, she had never, ever tried to replace Katara and Sokka’s mother. Had never though she _could._ And that was why, with Gran Gran, she could really cry about it.

When her tears finally dried up, the hole inside her was still there, but she was a good way from the edge, rather than lying in a heap at the bottom of it. Gran Gran was finally able to loosen her grip, and used her thumbs to wipe away the last of the dampness from Katara’s face. She smiled softly, almost sadly, and gently brushed her fingers against the necklace that Katara had rarely taken off for fourteen years.

“You’ve been wearing that for longer than either she or I did, you know.”

Katara reached a hand up to her throat. Although she had no patience for the idiot who had originally made it more than 70 years ago, she had to admit it had proved to be insanely hard wearing. True, it had lain in a drawer for thirty years before Gran Gran gave it to Dad to give to Katara’s mother, but for all its trials, it – like Katara, like Gran Gran – had been moulded into something entirely different to what it had originally been meant to be for. The times changed the women who wore it, but the necklace endured, just like life itself. 

“How about something to eat? That’ll make you feel better.”

Katara nodded, finally able to smile.

“Pancakes?”

She didn’t need to tell her whose recipe to use.

“Of course. It’ll be about ten minutes.”

Katara felt a burst of warmth in her chest as Gran Gran pressed a kiss to her cheek, then stood up. Just as she did, her eye was drawn to one of the many piles of _crap_ strewn all over the room. Gran Gran sighed, and clicked her tongue.

“Before you come down, send a message to your dad and tell him that if he doesn’t put those flipping hunting knives back on the wall, I’m going to start using them to chop vegetables.”

_Poor Dad,_ Katara thought, as she giggled to herself and brought out her phone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you want to read about how Kanna honed her parenting skills, do check out my teenage Bakoda fic, Give me my Romeo...
> 
> Kudos and comments are much appreciated :)


End file.
